What We Believe

Worship to the glory of God. We believe worship is our eternal destiny and chief end, the most important thing we do, and that our corporate Sunday worship services on the Lord’s Day should be a weekly foretaste of that glorious destiny (Rev. 19–21). To that end, our commitment for our worship is for excellence and beauty befitting a sacred meeting between Almighty God and His covenant people, especially in the following categories:

Expository and edifying preaching. We are committed to continued and consistent excellence in the expository preaching of God’s Word that teaches, inspires, and highlights the truths of the passage being exposited; connects us to the truths of our great faith; and helps us apply those truths to our lives and souls. To avoid preaching only on favored themes and to ensure we hear the whole counsel of God, we are committed to expositing books of the Bible which the pastor systematically works through in their entirety over a period of time.

Regular, but not rote, partaking of the Elements. We believe the Lord’s Supper is an important means of grace, and to be regularly celebrated as Christ has commanded. Given that belief, we are committed to a monthly celebration of the Lord’s Supper—an interval that we believe provides for both adequate preparation and refreshment, without becoming rote.

Dialogical and mindful liturgy. We believe that worship is an act in which we not only receive from God but also respond to Him. We are committed to participatory liturgy in which we are consistently reminded of the Gospel and the Doctrines of Grace. While allowing for small changes in the liturgy from week to week, we envision that the liturgy would each and every week further the proclamation of the Word preached and read, providing the congregation opportunities to respond with: confession; songs of thanksgiving; recitations of creeds, confessions, and catechisms; tithes and offerings; and, perhaps most importantly, the sacrifice of praise.

Rich and traditional music. We think the primary audience for the music in our worship is God, and we are committed to offering to Him and our congregation music that utilizes the best of the Protestant corpus of sacred music—music that aligns our emotions with the truths being emphasized in the sermon and liturgy. For our collective singing, this will especially include the rich hymnody of our Reformation forebears, but it will also include occasional singing of metrical psalms from the Old Testament and the occasional singing of new songs being produced today for corporate worship.

Fellowship that builds the body. Fellowship is God’s design for His people. It has been a hallmark of the church from the beginning (Acts 2:42–47), and it is a means by which God blesses and grows us in grace. We want to foster authentic and rich relationships in the midst of busy lives with events and opportunities for meeting and connecting with our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and children “in the faith,” and we want to foster organic fellowship outside of church-sponsored events and opportunities. While forces within and without the church seek to divide believers demographically along lines of race, income, and age, we are convinced that the Scripture encourages integrational and intergenerational fellowship amongst the “family of families,” and we want churchwide events and activities that foster that. To that end, we are committed to:

Growth and greater participation in our Wednesday evening fellowship meal and time. We envision greater participation in our Wednesday night ministry and are committed to making it easier—easier to come to one part of the time or the other, easier to come without preparation, and easier to find food offerings that appeal to all. To decrease the logistical burden of the meal, and to increase offerings, we eventually envision catering, both funded by suggested participant donations and church subsidization for this important ministry. To ensure the time fosters fellowship, we envision eventually making this a time when groups can meet around not just teaching but also corporate prayer, music practices, youth and family activities, et cetera.

Increase in the number and types of churchwide events. We are hoping to increase the number and types of events we host, continuing the church picnics, canoe trips, cookoffs, retreats, game nights, and campouts we already do, and adding to them game-watching parties, banquets, and a variety of events that fit varying interests. To that end, we envision more and more events being taken on by more and more congregants with the energy, creativity, and interest to own them, and for the church, more and more, to support them with resources and spaces.

With our new property and, eventually, a new facility, we are planning to be able to provide fellowship spaces that will readily accommodate our Wednesday-night gatherings and other events.

Discipleship that educates and edifies everyone. The Bible teaches us that God’s will for every believer is their sanctification, or growth in grace (1 Thess. 4:3-4). As the apostle Paul writes in Romans, we are being conformed to the image of the Son (Rom. 8:29), and this process of discipleship necessitates a community of believers together. To facilitate this discipleship, we envision continued growth in:

Sunday school. We are committed to a robust Sunday-school ministry to encourage believers to dive deeper into what it means to be a Christian and disciple of Jesus Christ. Topics (such as apologetics, ethics, Christ and culture, missionary testimonies, etc.) will be rooted in Scripture when a book of the Bible is not being exegeted. In addition to adult classes, as we grow, we look forward to continuing to offer children’s classes as well as youth classes centered particularly on curricula to train the next generation in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).

Weekly/daily book studies. We encourage regular books studies that meet throughout the year, focusing on books of the Bible as well as other topics, such as prayer, biblical manhood and womanhood, church history, Christian classics, et cetera. We also encourage our congregation to make use of regular Bible reading plans, the Tabletalk devotional magazine from Ligonier Ministries, and other personal and family devotional material.

Prayer meetings. In addition to the corporate prayers offered in worship services, we envision continuing to offer opportunities for all to gather for prayer in groups and individually, as the Session may call for days of fasting and prayer.

We will continue to utilize our current temporary facilities, our personal homes, and our property at the Frank farm in order to grow all our members in discipleship of Jesus Christ.

Missions with a kingdom-expansion, church-planting emphasis.

We heartily affirm that the Lord has called us not to exist merely for ourselves but to be a part of the establishment of His Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9–13; 28:18–20). We are committed to supporting ministries and missionaries that emphasize the planting of healthy ordinary-means-of-grace churches locally and globally, including the hope of one day planting a daughter church. It is our desire to partner with those organizations and members from which we can receive regular reports and with whom we can participate financially and prayerfully.

PCA mission organizations. As we are able, we hope to partner primarily with our denominational institutions, such as Mission to the World (MTW), and the Ohio Presbytery in their efforts to plant and revitalize congregations engaged in fulfilling the great commission in Ohio, the USA, and around the world.

WordPartners. In light of our distinctive emphasis on expository preaching in worship, we are glad to partner with Rev. Sean Martin and his sending organization of WordPartners, particularly in the nation of Haiti, as he and that ministry seek to train pastors in biblical exposition and homiletics.

Ohio Presbytery church planting. We are committed to continuing to see church plants in the boundaries of our own Ohio Presbytery that share our ministry emphases.

We believe that the local church is called to be the church and to focus on worship, fellowship, discipleship, and mission. Nevertheless, edified by our worship, encouraged by our fellowship, educated through our discipleship, and inspired by our missions, we are hopeful that our members will be ambassadors for Trinity and, more importantly, for Christ in service, sports, culture, and politics. While we do not envision our church being one of the many that emphasizes church programs, we do envision sending out believers that are active and, indeed, leaders in the service, sport, culture, and politics of our community.